Gospel Sentence Examples

His " gospel of understanding " had proved effective both in domestic and foreign politics.

Others find in the gospel of redemption the true theodicy.

Some of his addresses on social matters have been published under the heading "Essays on the Social Gospel" (1907).

He will eliminate foreign accretions, that the gospel of Christ may stand forth in its native purity, and that Christ Himself may in all things have the pre-eminence.

Picturesque teaching of this kind was always popular, and specimens of it are familiar in the Gospel discourses.

The place-name "Gospel Oak," which occurs in London and elsewhere, is a relic of these rogation processions, the gospel of the day being read at the foot of the finest oak the parish boasted.

The genealogy of Jesus here given is peculiar to this Gospel.

In the epistle ambo at Salerno and the gospel ambones at Cava and San Giovanni del Toro in Ravello, the columns support segmental arches carrying the ambones; the epistle ambo at Ravello and all those in Rome are raised on solid marble bases.

Hitherto at least the fourth gospel has been the touchstone.

John was sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and hoped to labour as a missionary among the Indians, but though he had many interesting conversations with them the mission was found to be impracticable.

The adaptation of the Gospel to the changing conditions of humanity is to-day a more pressing need than ever.

The first, on the 27th of June 1906, affirmed, with some significant but unworkable reservations, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and the second (29th of May 1907) strenuously maintained the Apostolic Zebedean authorship of the fourth Gospel, and the strictly historical character of the events and speeches recorded therein.

A skull, a coffin, the Gospel--it seemed to him that he had expected all this and even more.

She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband is alive.

To this belief, many and good as are the arguments which can be advanced for it, a confident certainty is given by Christian faith in the Risen Lord, and the life and immortality which he has brought to light in his Gospel.

He was required to maintain the Protestant reformed religion and to suppress " all religion at variance with the gospel."

In 1653 he had made the astonishing proposal to the Dutch that England and Holland should divide the habitable globe outside Europe between them, that all states maintaining the Inquisition should be treated as enemies by both the proposed allies, and that the latter "should send missionaries to all peoples willing to receive them, to inculcate the truth of Jesus Christ and the Holy Gospel."

This time he was successful; he made his way to Egypt, where the crusaders were besieging Damietta, got himself taken prisoner and was led before the sultan, to whom he openly preached the Gospel.

He sees no sign of an attack upon him or his gospel.

This antiphon received the name either because it was sung on the steps of the altar or while the deacon was mounting the steps of the ambo for the reading or singing of the Gospel.

Gherardo, however, did not say, as has been supposed, that Joachim's books were the new gospel, but merely that the Calabrian abbot had supplied the key to Holy Writ, and that with the help of that intelligentia mystica it would be possible to extract from the Old and New Testaments the eternal meaning, the gospel according to the Spirit, a gospel which would never be written; as for this eternal sense, it had been entrusted to an order set apart, to the Franciscan order announced by Joachim, and in this order the ideal of the third age was realized.

His greatest success was on the Rhine, where in the summers of 1863 and 1864 his travels as missionary of the new gospel resembled a triumphal procession.

The Jew and the heathen had the gospel preached to them in the world below by Christ and his apostles, and Christians will have to pass through processes of purification and trial after death before they reach knowledge and perfect bliss.

His work consisted largely in organizing the Christian societies which he found in existence on his arrival, and in planting the faith in regions such as the extreme west of Connaught which had not yet come under the sway of the gospel.

The first course was published in the Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses; and here also appeared instalments of his commentary on St John's Gospel, his critically important Notes sur la Genese, and a Chronique biblique unmatched in its mastery of its numberless subjects and its fearless yet delicate penetration.

The little book promptly aroused widespread interest, some cordial sympathy and much vehement opposition; whilst its large companion the Etudes evangeliques, containing the course on the parables and four sections of his coming commentary on the Fourth Gospel, passed almost unnoticed.

According to Harnack, it is an extract from the Gospel of the Egyptians.

This gospel is first mentioned by Clem.

Recently Schubert has sought to derive the elements which are found in the Petrine Gospel, but not in the canonical gospels, from the original Ada Pilati, while Zahn exactly reverses the relation of these two works.

Rendel Harris (1899) advocated the view that the Gospel of Nicodemus, as we possess it, is merely a prose version of the Gospel of Nicodemus written originally in Homeric centones as early as the 2nd century.

A collection of the Greek and Latin fragments that have survived, mainly in Origen and Jerome, will be found in Hilgenfeld's NT extra Canonem receptum, Nicholson's Gospel according to the Hebrews (1879), Westcott's lntrod.

The name " Gospel according to the Hebrews " cannot have been original; for if it had been so named because of its general use among the Hebrews, yet the Hebrews themselves would not have used this designation.

It may have been known simply as " the Gospel."

This gospel must have been translated at an early date into Greek, as Clement and Origen cite it as generally accessible, and Eusebius recounts that many reckoned it among the received books.

The gospel is synoptic in character and is closely related to Matthew, though in the Resurrection accounts it has affinities with Luke.

This gospel professes to give an account of our Lord's boyhood.

This gospel was originally still more Docetic than it now is, according to Lipsius.

A quotation from this gospel is given by Epiphanius.

It is possible that this is the Gospel of Perfection (Eimy-yatov TEXEL60-Ews) which he touches upon in xxvi.

The quotation shows that this gospel was the expression of complete pantheism.

This third work contained in the Coptic MS. referred to under Gospel of Mary gives cosmological disclosures and is presumably of Valentinian origin.

This gospel is found in a Coptic MS. of the 5th century.

Berlin (1896), pp. 839 sqq., this gospel gives disclosures on the nature of matter (An) and the progress of the Gnostic soul through the seven planets.

This gospel described the progress of a soul through the next world.

Of this gospel only one fragment has been preserved in Hippolytus, Philos.

This gospel is mentioned by Irenaeus i.

Some of his citations are derived from the Gospel to the Egyptians.

Provided that the preaching of the gospel was free and full, Luther was willing to tolerate episcopacy and even papacy.

The chief of them, written against Calvinism, are Five Checks to Antinomianism, Scripture Scales to weigh the Gold of Gospel Truth, and the Portrait of St Paul.

It is surely as difficult to suppose that the Davidic psalms of the first book are a selection made from a greater collection of such psalms contained in the " Director's Psalter " as it is to imagine that St Mark's Gospel is an abridgment of St, Matthew's.

From the beginning of the 3rd to the beginning of the 5th century Tatian's Harmony or Diatessaron - whether originally compiled in Syriac, or compiled in Greek and translated into Syriac - was the current form of gospel in the Syriac Church.

Ephraim's Quotations from the Gospel (Cambridge, 1901); Evangelion da-mepharreshe (Cambridge, 1904), and the above cited Lecture.

They explained away baptisms as "words of the Holy Gospel," citing the text "I am the living water."

Their canon included only the "Gospel and Apostle," of which they respected the text, but distorted the meaning.

Gregory Magistros, as we have seen, attests their predilection for the apostle Paul, and speaks of their perpetually "quoting the Gospel and the Apostolon."

The "Gospel and Apostle" was a comprehensive term for the whole of the New Testament (except perhaps Revelation), as read in church.

The oldest Ordo Romanus, which perhaps takes us back to within a century of Gregory the Great, enjoins that in pontifical masses a subdeacon, with a golden censer, shall go before the bishop as he leaves the secretarium for the choir, and two, with censers, before the deacon gospeller as he proceeds with the gospel to the ambo.

The Missal of the Roman Church now enjoins incensation before the introit, at the gospel and again at the offertory, and at the elevation, in every high mass; the use of incense also occurs at the exposition of the sacrament, at consecrations of churches and the like, in processions, in the office for the burial of the dead and at the exhibition of relics.

The middle of the altar was censed, according to Sarum, Bangor and Hereford, before the reading of the Gospel.

According to Sarum and Bangor, the thurible, as well as the lights, attended the Gospel to the lectern.

Perhaps the York rubric implies that this was done when it orders (which the others do not) the thurible to be carried round the choir with the Gospel while the Creed was being sung.

Catholic writers generally treat it as typifying contrition, the preaching of the Gospel, the prayers of the faithful and the virtues of the saints.

This tradition is important in spite of the fact that it first comes clearly before us in a writer belonging to the latter part of the 2nd century, because the prominence and fame of Luke were not such as would of themselves have led to his being singled out to have a Gospel attributed to him.

The question of the authorship cannot, however, be decided without considering the internal evidence, the interpretation of which in the case of the Third Gospel and the Acts (the other writing attributed to Luke) is a matter of peculiar interest.

But it has been and is still held by many critics that the author of Acts is a different person, and that as in the Third Gospel he has used documents for the Life of Christ, and perhaps also in the earlier half of the Acts for the history of the beginnings of the Christian Church, so in the "we" sections, and possibly in some other portions of this narrative of Paul's missionary life, he has used a kind of travel-diary by one who accompanied the Apostle on some of his journeys.

A careful examination, however, of the "we" sections shows that words and expressions characteristic of the author of the third Gospel and the Acts are found in them to an extent which is very remarkable, and that in many instances they belong to the very texture of the passages.

There is then strong reason for believing the tradition that Luke, the companion of the Apostle Paul, was the author of our third Gospel and the Acts.

And this was true in regard to the two which, from a comparison of his Gospel with the other two Synoptics, we know that he did use.

He includes besides, a few pieces peculiar to this Gospel which Luke had probably himself collected.

The thought of divine forgiveness, as set forth in the teaching of Jesus and manifested in His own attitude towards, and power over, the hearts of the outcasts among the people, is peculiarly prominent in this Gospel.

With the breadth and depth of the Saviour's sympathy, which are so fully exhibited in this Gospel, we may connect the clearness with which His true humanity is here portrayed.

The peculiar charm which this Gospel has been generally felt to possess is largely due to the spiritual and ethical traits which have been noted.

In the Gospel he had no opportunity for showing his power in a manner strictly analogous.

Weiss, Die Quellen des Lukas-evangeliums (1907); also books on the Four Gospels, or the Synoptic Gospels, mentioned at end of article Gospel.

In 1739 the General Assembly, without any application from him, removed the sentence of deposition which had been passed against him, and restored him to the character and function of a minister of the gospel of Christ, but not that of a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, declaring that he was not eligible for a charge until he should have renounced principles inconsistent with the constitution of the church.

The preaching of Jesus shows traces of this, and the Fourth Gospel (as well as the Synoptists) displays a marked interest in connecting the Johannine movement with the beginnings of Christianity.

In an anecdote regarding a suit which Gamaliel was prosecuting before a Christian judge, a converted Jew, he appeals to the Gospel and to the words of Jesus in Matt.

The chief educational establishment is Codrington College, founded by Colonel ChristopherCodrington, who in 1710 bequeathed two estates to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

The Munich MS., formerly at Bamberg, begins at line 85, and has many lacunae, but continues the history down to the last verse of St Luke's Gospel, ending, however, in the middle of a sentence.

The commentary on the gospel of Matthew by Hrabanus Maurus was finished about 821, which is therefore the superior limit of date for the composition of the Heliand.

He now uses his knowledge to warn his readers, with intense passion, against all compromise between Judaism and the Gospel.

There exists, however, in a single MS. in Italian a longish gospel with this title, written from a Mahommedan standpoint, but probably embodying materials partly Gnostic in character and origin.

An opponent of the Tubingen school, his defence of the genuineness and authenticity of the gospel of St John is among the ablest that have been written; and although on some minor points his views did not altogether coincide with those of the traditional school, his critical labours on the New Testament must nevertheless be regarded as among the most important contributions to the maintenance of orthodox opinions.

I, 2), Paul assures them of his loving interest in their present attainments and future progress in the faith of the gospel (i.

In this he defended the forensic aspect of the gospel.

When quite young he expressed a wish to become a minister of the gospel, but his aspirations were discouraged by the local clergyman.

His only published works are two sermons, one preached before the Lords (London, 1794), the other before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (London, 1797).

According to the institution of the Apostles, and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of equal majesty in the Holy Trinity.

The Word of God alone is there to do it."Nevertheless Luther assigned to the state, which he assumes to be Christian, the function of maintaining the Gospel and the Word of God in public life.

The Gospel of Nicodemus, written by a Christian (possibly as early, Tischendorf thought, as the middle of the 2nd century), repeats the trial in a dull and diluted way; but adds not only alleged evidence of the Resurrection, but the splendid vision of the descensus ad inferos - the whole professing to be recorded in the Acta Pilati or official records of the governor.

Within the Church there was a departure from the great experimental truths of the Gospel, their place being taken by the preaching of nature and morality on a theistic basis.

She marched through the open door into the Roman state, and settled down there to Christianize the state by imparting to it the word of the Gospel, but at the same time leaving it everything except its gods.

But believers of the old school protested in the name of the Gospel against this secular Church.

He also wrote Fichte's Science of Knowledge (1884); Poetry, Comedy and Duty (1888); Religions before Christianity (1883); Ethics for Young People (1891); The Gospel of Paul (1892).

Amid the chaos of conflicting opinions as to the original teaching of Jesus, the Gospel within the Gospel, the central question " What think ye of Christ ?

In 1820 was published his treatise on the gospel of St John, entitled Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et origine, which attracted much attention.

To the astonishment of every one, Bretschneider announced in the preface to the second edition of his Dogmatik in 1822, that he had never doubted the authenticity of the gospel, and had published his Probabilia only to draw attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its genuineness.

The title "Word of God" can hardly be said to establish any connexion with the prologue of the Fourth Gospel; for the conceptions of the Messiah in that Gospel and in these chapters belong to different worlds of thought.

If the writer of the Fourth Gospel was the Apostle John, then the difficulties for the assumption of an apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse become well-nigh insuperable.

Nay more, the difficulties attending on the assumption of a common authorship of the Gospel and Apocalypse, independently of the question of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel, are practically insuperable.

Some decades ago these difficulties were not insurmountable, when critics assigned a Neronic date to the Apocalypse and a Domitianic or later date to the Gospel.

Again, while the Gospel and the Epistle of John show marks of agreement which suggest a common authorship, the Apocalypse differs widely from both in its ideas and in its way of expressing them; we miss in it the frequent references to ` life,' ` light,' ` truth,' ` grace ' and ` love ' which are characteristic of the Apostle and find ourselves in a totally different region of thought..

The Gospel and the First Epistle are written in correct and flowing Greek, and there is not a barbarism, a solecism, or a provincialism in them; whereas the Greek of the Apocalypse is inaccurate, disfigured by unusual or foreign words and even at times by solecisms."

On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the signs of a relationship between the Apocalypse and the Gospel in the minor peculiarities of language?

We conclude, therefore, that the Gospel and the Apocalypse See Bousset, Offenbarung Johannis 2, pp. 177-179; Swete 2, pp. cxxv - cxxix.

As regards the John mentioned in the Apocalypse, he is now identified by a majority of critics with John the Presbyter, and further the trend of criticism is in favour of transferring all the Johannine writings to him, or rather to his school in Asia Minor.2 For an independent discussion of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, see JOHN, GOSPEL OF ST.

This personage was said to be of the ancient race of the Magi mentioned in the Gospel, to rule the same nations that they ruled, and to have such wealth that he used a sceptre of solid emerald.

The purity of the Gospel might have been defiled.

In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught and preached, I now joyfully die."

He insisted that fresh, cold air was not the cause of colds, and preached zealously the " gospel of ventilation."

He denounced the papal government as utterly degraded, and urged that the vast property of the Church, which he held to be the chief cause of its degradation, should be secularized and that the clergy should consist of " poor priests," supported only by tithes and alms. They should preach the gospel and encourage the people to seek the truth in the Scriptures themselves, of which a translation into English was completed in 1382.

He had, however, already begun to look sourly upon Aristotle and the current scholastic theology, which he believed hid the simple truth of the gospel and the desperate state of mankind, who were taught a vain reliance upon outward works and ceremonies, when the only safety lay in throwing oneself on God's mercy.

Luther's gospel was one of love and confidence, not of fear and trembling, and came as an overwhelming revelation to those who understood and accepted it.

What we want is the heart, and to win that we must preach the gospel.

The peasants demanded that the gospel should be taught them as a guide in life, and that each community should be permitted to choose its pastor and depose him if he conducted himself improperly.

Luther, who believed that the peasants were trying to cloak their dreadful sins with excuses from the gospel, exhorted the government to put down the insurrection.

The religious ideas in South Germany were affected by the development of a reform party in Switzerland, under the influence of Zwingli, who claimed that at Einsiedeln, near the lake of Zurich, he had begun to preach the gospel of Christ in the year 1516 " before any one in my locality tion in had so much as heard the name of Luther."

He maintained that Christ was the only high priest and that the gospel did not gain its sanction from the authority of the Church.

The author of the complete work, as we now have it, has modified the original Two Ways by inserting near the beginning a considerable section containing, among other matter, passages from the Sermon on the Mount, in which the language of St Matthew's Gospel is blended with that of St Luke's.

Next come three eucharistic prayers, the language of which is clearly marked off from that of the rest of the book, and shows parallels with the diction of St John's Gospel.

An apostle is to be "received as the Lord"; but he must follow the Gospel precepts, stay but one or two days, and take no money, but only bread enough for a day's journey.

Certainly the stage of development is an early one, as is shown, e.g., by the prominence of prophets, and the need that was felt for the vindication of the position of the bishops and deacons (there is no mention at all of presbyters); moreover, there is no reference to a canon of Scripture (though the written Gospel is expressly mentioned) or to a creed.

Three of the Gospels have clearly been for some time in circulation; St Matthew's is used several times, and there are phrases which occur only in St Luke's, while St John's Gospel lies behind the eucharistic prayers which the writer has embodied in his work.

There he studied the New Testament in the editions of Erasmus and began to found his preaching on "the Gospel," which he declared to be simple and easy to understand.

Zwingli began to preach "the Gospel" in 1516, but a contemporary says that he did it so cunningly (listiglich) that none could suspect his drift.

As yet he had preached his Gospel without saying much about corruptions in the Roman Church, and it was his political denunciation of the fratricidal wars into which the pope, not less than others, was drawing his fellow-countrymen, that first led to rupture with the papal see.

In the beginning of 1519 he began a series of discourses on St Matthew's Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Pauline epistles; and with these it may be said that the Reformation was fairly begun in Zurich.

It was his claim that he had discovered the Gospel before ever Luther was heard of in Switzerland, and he was as anxious as Erasmus to make it clear that he was not Luther's disciple.

The first class hold (1) that oaths are forbidden by the gospel, (2) that capital punishment is not allowed to the civil power, (3) that any layman may consecrate the sacrament of the altar, and (4) that the Roman Church is not the Church of Christ.

In the words of the Gospel of St Luke, he ordered "the whole world to be taxed," or, according to the revised version, to be enrolled.

It regards church authority as inhering, according to the very genius of the Gospel, in each local body of believers, as a miniature realization of the whole Church, which can itself have only an ideal corporate being on earth.

But this implied the gathering of the earnest " professors " in each locality into a definite body, committed to the Gospel as their law of life.

But from the English conquest to the close of the colonial era the chief purpose of the government with respect to education was to prepare leaders for the state church; to this end King's College was founded in 1754, and from 1704 to 1776 the other schools were principally those maintained by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

It will then apply the tests thus gained to the narratives special to this Gospel; and point out the book's special difficulties and limits, and its abiding appeal and greatness.

Thus six great terms are characteristic of, or even special to, this Gospel.

The Fourth Gospel is the noblest instance of this kind of literature, of which the truth depends not on the factual accuracy of the symbolizing appearances but on the truth of the ideas and experiences thus symbolized.

Thus the recent defenders of the apostolic authorship, the Unitarian James Drummond (1903), the Anglican William Sanday (1905), the Roman Catholic Theodore Calmes (1904), can tell us, the first, that " the evangelist did not aim at an illustrative picture of what was most characteristic of Jesus "; the second, that " the author sank into his own consciousness and at last brought to light what he found there "; the third, that " the Gospel contains an entire theological system," " history is seen through the intervening dogmatic development," " the Samaritan woman is.

As to the place, the critics accept proconsular Asia with practical unanimity, thus endorsing Irenaeus's declaration that the Gospel was published in Ephesus.

Other slighter prolusions will have circulated in that Philonian centre Ephesus, before the great Gospel englobed and superseded them.

Justin Martyr (163-167) certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an apostolic eyewitness.

A positive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus.

The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian presbyter.

This man was so great that the writer strives to win his authority for this Gospel; and yet this man was not John the Zebedean, else why, now he is dead and gone, not proclaim the fact?

If the dead man was John the presbyter - if this John had in youth just seen Jesus and the Zebedean, and in extreme old age had still seen and approved the Gospel - to attribute this Gospel to him, as is done here, would not violate the literary ethics of those times.

The facts of the problem would all appear covered by the hypothesis that John the presbyter, the eleven being all dead, wrote the book of Revelation (its more ancient Christian portions) say in 69, and died at Ephesus say in loo; that the author of the Gospel wrote the first draft, here, say in 97; that this book, expanded by him, first circulated within a select Ephesian Christian circle; and that the Ephesian church officials added to it the appendix and published it in 110 -120.

And the Fourth Gospel's true greatness lies well within the range of this its special character.

Much the same applies to Bp Westcott's Gospel according to St John (1882), devotionally so attractive, and in textual criticism excellent.

Dr James Drummond's Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (1903) does not, by its valuable survey of the external evidence, succeed in giving credibility to the eyewitness origin of such a book as this is admitted to be.

Sanday's slighter Criticism of the Fourth Gospel (1905) is in a similar position.

C. Burkitt's The Gospel History (1906) vigorously sketches the book's dominant characteristics and true function.

Scott's The Fourth Gospel (1906) gives a lucid, critical and religiously tempered account of the Gospel's ideas, aims, affinities, difficulties and abiding significance.

Till quite recent times this Gospel, though nominally equal to the others in authority, has unquestionably not aroused the same interest or feelings of attachment as they have, partly from its not bearing the name of an apostle for its author, as the first and fourth do, partly, also, owing to the fact that the first and third, while they include most of what is found in it, contain much additional matter, which is of the highest value.

The significance of all that we can learn as to the history of the composition of Mark's Gospel is clearly enhanced by this consideration.

There can be little doubt that the work to which Papias himself supposed this story to apply was the Gospel of Mark virtually as we know it.

It may be noted also that the same view of the origin of the Gospel of Mark appears to have been held by a contemporary of Papias, Justin Martyr.

But is our Gospel of Mark also to be identified with the writing by Mark spoken of by "the elder" whose account had been reported to Papias ?

In support of this view it is urged, though it is so much less often now than it used to be, that the description "not in order" does not fit our Gospel of Mark, the order in which is from an historical point of view as good as, if not better than, in the other Gospels.

But from whomsoever the expression proceeds - whether from Papias, or his informant, or "the elder"- we may feel sure that considerations such as appeal to us from our training in historical criticism are not those which suggested it, but rather the want of agreement between this Gospel and some standard which on altogether different grounds was applied to it.

This argument, then, for supposing that the original writing by Mark differed widely in form and contents from the Gospel which now bears his name appears to be without force.

The question whether the two differed to any, and if so to what, extent can be decided only from an examination of the Gospel itself.

The last consideration seems to show that the general form and structure of the Gospel, and not merely certain portions of it, are original.

There does not, then, seem to be good reason for thinking that the work which proceeded from the hands of Mark differed widely in character and contents from the Gospel which now bears his name.

And it is not so likely that Mark should have mistaken it for a distinct incident as that an editor of his Gospel should have done so.

As we have found it necessary to distinguish between the original composition by Mark, to whom in the main the work appears to be due, and some enlargement and alteration which it subsequently underwent whereby it reached its present form, these stages must be borne in mind in considering dates that may be assigned in connexion with this Gospel.

The chief revision of Mark would seem, then, to have taken place between the times of the composition of the first and third Gospels, which cannot be far removed from one another (see Matthew, Gospel Of St).

It is emphatically "the Gospel," because it sets forth the person and work of the Christ.

Further, its opening seems modelled on the lines of the preface to Luke's Gospel, to which, along with Acts, it may owe something of its very conception as a reasoned appeal to the lover of truth.

But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g.

Yet their very use of the same terms or ideas makes us the more aware of "a marked contrast to the depth and clearness of conception with which the several Apostolic writers place before us different aspects of the Gospel" (Lightfoot).

In fact the perspective of the Gospel was seriously changed and its most distinctive features obscured.

The result was too great a continuity between their religious conceptions before and after embracing the Gospel.

This is what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit; and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that they were themselves genuine "epistles of Christ."

On the whole, however, he modified the positions of the founder of the Tubingen school, going beyond him only in his investigations into the Fourth Gospel.

He also commissioned Palladius to preach the gospel in Ireland which was beginning to rally to Christianity.

The danger was that under cover of such a title an unhistorical conception of the facts of the Gospel should grow up, and a false doctrine of the relations between the human and the Divine be encouraged, and this was to Nestorius a double danger that needed to be exposed.

This view is confirmed by the evidence of the Synodicon Orientate (the collection of the canons of Nestorian Councils and Synods), which shows that the Great Syriac Church built up by the adherents of Nestorius and ever memorable for its zeal in carrying the Gospel into Central Asia, China and India cannot, from its inception, be rightly described as other than orthodox.

The specific gospel of Jesus, the gospel of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, received no attention in the earliest days, so far as our sources enable us to judge.

Among the Christians who did most to spread the gospel in the Gentile world was the apostle Paul, whose conversion was the greatest event in the history of the early Church.

The latter tendency appeared first in Paul, afterwards in the Gospel and First Epistle of John, in Ignatius of Antioch and in the Gnostics.

The views of the Gnostics, and of Marcion as well, seemed to the majority of Christians destructive of the gospel, and it was widely felt that they were too dangerous to be tolerated.

Augustine was not the first preacher of the Gospel at Canterbury.

His views on social subjects, and the responsibilities which great wealth involved, were already known in a book entitled Triumphant Democracy, published in 1886, and in his Gospel of Wealth (1900).

It arose from differences about the precise meaning of the word "law" in Luther's distinction between law and gospel.

Ira David Sankey (1840-1908) joined him in Chicago in 1870 and helped him greatly by the singing of hymns; and in a series of notable revival meetings in England (1873-1875, 1881-1884, 1891-1892) and America they carried on their gospel campaign, and became famous for the Moody and Sankey Gospel Hymns.

In his theology he laid stress on the Gospel and on no sectarian opinions - he was, however, a pre-millenarianite - and he worked with men as much more "advanced" than himself as Henry Drummond, whom he eagerly defended against orthodox attack, and George Adam Smith.

It is in this incidental and digressive way that we get the description of the Gospel in i.

Some Jews, like those who are described in the Gospel as " waiting for the kingdom of God," would be pious men and women carefully trained in the Old Testament, who would be almost fit for the kingdom even before they had heard of Christ.

Its first conspicuous product was our present Gospel of St Mark, which was probably composed at Rome within the years 64-70.

We say advisedly " our present Gospel of St Mark," because there does not seem to us to be any sufficient reason for presupposing an Ur-Marcus, or older form of this Gospel.

And it is probable that other Gospels of which only fragments have come down to us, like the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter, have been built up out of the same materials.

It is an event of no small importance for criticism that so eminent a scholar as Prof. Harnack should have come round to the view, almost universally prevalent in England, that St Luke himself was the final editor and author of both the Third Gospel and the Acts.

The Gospel and Epistles that bear the name of John, and the Apocalypse, form a group of writings that stand very much by themselves and are still the subject of active discussion.

Can the writer of the Apocalypse be the same as the writer of the Gospel and Epistles ?

Whatever may be the ultimate decision on these intricate questions, the Fourth Gospel in any case played a very important part in the history of the Church and of Christian theology.

It drew together and gathered up into itself the forces at work in the apostolic age; and, by reaching out a hand as it were (through the preface) towards Greek philosophy, it succeeded in so formulating the leading doctrines of Christianity as to make it more acceptable than it had as yet been to the Gentile world, and in securing for the Gospel a place in the main stream of European thought.

Outside this group would come what are called the Apocryphal Gospels and Acts (Gospel according to Hebrews, according to Egyptians, of Peter, of Truth, of the Twelve [or Ebionite Gospel], the recently recovered so-called Logia; the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Protevangelium of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Pilate, Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas; the Preaching of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter).

This is the general view of the Church of his time, except the little clique known as the Alogi who rejected the Fourth Gospel, and Marcion who only recognized St Luke.

If Justin used any other Gospel, his use of it was very subordinate.

There are many indications early in the 2nd century of a tendency towards the recognition of a single Gospel; for instance, there are the local Gospels according to Hebrews, according to Egyptians; Marcion had but one Gospel, St Luke, the Valentinians preferred St John and so on; Tatian reduced the Four Gospels to one by means of a Harmony, and it is possible that something of the kind may have existed before he did this.

This Church at first acknowledged only the Gospel (in the form of Tatian's Diatessaron), Acts and the Epistles of Paul.

Prof. Burkitt's Gospel History and its Transmission appeared in 1906.

It is also necessary to add that there is one small scrap of papyrus of the 3rd century containing a few verses of the 4th Gospel.

Luke wrote the first edition of the Gospel for Theophilus from Caesarea; this is the Neutral text of the Gospel.

Afterwards he went to Rome and there revised the text of the Gospel and reissued it for the Church in that city; this is the Western (or, as Blass calls it, Roman) text of the Gospel.

To some extent influenced by and using Bousset's results, Schmidtke has tried to show that certain small lines in the margin of B point to a connexion between that MS. and a Gospel harmony, which, by assuming that the text of B is Hesychian, he identifies with that of Ammonius.

But though we may trace a real affiliation between the principles of Luther and modern German critical study - notably in the doctrines of the Gospel within the Gospel and of the residual Essence of Christianity - Luther's discriminations were in the 17th century ignored in practice.

The value of the Fourth Gospel as a narrative of events is a matter of dispute, but the view of the personality of Jesus Christ set forth in it is unquestionably that which the Church has accepted.

How long before this the Nativity should be placed the Gospel does not enable us to say precisely, but as Herod's decree of extermination included all infants up to two years of age, and as a sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt of unknown length intervened between the massacre and Herod's death, it is clear that it is at least possible, so far as the evidence of this Gospel goes, that the birth of Christ preceded Herod's death by as much as two or three years.

The notice in the Gospel, it is suggested, grew out of a confused recollection of the later (and only historical) census, and is devoid of any value whatever.

It does not seem possible to rule out either interpretation; the choice between them will follow from the view taken of the general chronological arrangement of the Gospel.

But of late years an increasing desire has been manifested, especially in Germany and America, to manipulate the fourth Gospel on grounds of internal evidence, at first only in the way of particular transpositions of more or less attractiveness, but latterly also by schemes of thorough-going rearrangement.

The former class of proposals will as a rule hardly affect the chronology of the Gospel; the latter will affect it vitally.

With this exception, however, all ancient writers, whether they enumerated two or three or four Passovers in the Gospel history, believed that the enumeration was exhaustive; and their belief appears correctly to represent the mind of the author of the Fourth Gospel, seeing that his various notes of time were probably in intentional contrast to the looser synoptic accounts.

The current theological formula for this two-sided position is that the prophets are at once preachers of the law and forerunners of the gospel; and, as it is generally assumed that they found the law already written, their originality and real importance is made to lie wholly in their evangelical function.

This i f the post-prophetic problem which occupies the more profound of the later Old-Testament books, but first received its true solution in the gospel, when the last shreds of the old nationalism disappeared and the spiritual kingdom found its centre in the person of Christ.

In this as in all other matters of transcendental truth "wisdom is justified of her children"; the conclusive vindication of the prophets as true messengers of God is that their work forms an integral part in the progress of spiritual religion, and there are many things in their teaching the profundity and importance of which are much clearer to us than they could possibly have been to their contemporaries, because they are mere flashes of spiritual insight lighting up for a moment some corner of a region on which the steady sun of the gospel had not yet risen.

The Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England (founded in 1649) bore the expense of printing both the New Testament and the Bible as a whole (Cambridge, Mass., 1663 - the earliest Bible printed in.America), which John Eliot, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, translated into "the language of the Massachusetts Indians," whom he evangelized.

In January 1799 he was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel by the St Andrews presbytery.

His journal and letters show how he was led from a sustained effort to attain the morality of the Gospel to a profound spiritual revolution.

The duties we are to perform (1) in regard to the moral law, (2) in regard to the gospel - (a) inward duties, i.e.

Bright, The Gospel of Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1893); for earlier editions see Cook, op. cit, p. lx.

The second Gospel fragment discovered in 1907 " consists of z single vellum leaf, practically complete except at one of the lower corners and here most of the lacunae admit of a satisfactory solution."

The first theory has assumed three main forms. (a) Harnack maintains that they were taken from the Gospel according to the Egyptians.

This theory, however, is based upon a hypothetical reconstruction of the Gospel in question which has found very few supporters.

The 1903 Gospel fragment is so mutilated in many of its parts that it is difficult to decide upon its character and value.

It appears to be earlier than 150, and to be taken from a Gospel which followed more or less closely the version of the teaching of Jesus given by Matthew and Luke.

The phrase " when ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed " contains an idea which has some affinity with two passages found respectively in the Gospel according to the Egyptians and the so-called Second Epistle of Clement.

The resemblance, however, is not sufficiently close to warrant the deduction that either the Gospel of the Egyptians or the Gospel from which the citation in 2 Clement is taken (if these two are distinct) is the source from which our fragment is derived.

The second Gospel fragment (1907) seems to be of later origin than the documents already mentioned.

The whole teaching of the Doukhobors is penetrated with the Gospel spirit of love.

This view was represented in Asia Minor about the year 170 by the anti-Montanistic Alogi, so called by Epiphanius on account of their rejection of the Fourth Gospel; it was also taught at Rome about the end of the 2nd century by Theodotus of Byzantium, a currier, who was excommunicated by Bishop Victor, and at a later date by Artemon, excommunicated by Zephyrinus.

The fourth gospel, written perhaps A.D.

In the Fathers of the first three or four centuries can be traced the same tendency to spiritualize the Eucharist as we encountered in the fourth gospel, and in the Didache.

We may thus hope to recover some priceless monuments of early Christianity, hymns and treatises perhaps of Marcion and Bardesanes, the Gospel of Peter, and even the Diatessaron.

Papa Stronsay (16) commemorates in its name, as others of both the Orkneys and Shetlands do, the labours of the Celtic papae, or missionaries, who preached the Christian gospel before the arrival of the Northmen.

What he did was really done for the Gospel, as he understood it, with all the faculties of his soul.

But he understood the Gospel as being primarily an assured hope and a holy law, as fear of the Judge who can cast into hell and as an inflexible rule of faith and of discipline.

Of the glorious liberty of the children of God he had nothing but a mere presentiment; he looked for it only in the world beyond the grave, and under the power of the Gospel he counted as loss all the world could give.

Among all the fathers of the first three centuries Tertullian has given the most powerful expression to the terrible earnestness of the Gospel.

It was his desire to unite the enthusiasm cf primitive Christianity with intelligent thought, the original demands of the Gospel with every letter of the Scriptures and with the practice of the Roman church, the sayings of the Paraclete with the authority of the bishops, the law of the churches with the freedom of the inspired, the rigid discipline of the Montanist with all the utterances of the New Testament and with the arrangements of a church seeking to set itself up within the world.

This Manifesto has remained a kind of gospel for extreme Communists, and its pronouncements served as a guidance in the attempt of the Russian Bolsheviks (Russian for" Majority "party) to create a Communist republic in Russia.

In 1859 there appeared his Characteristics of the Gospel Miracles.

His Commentaries on St John's Gospel (1881), on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and the Epistles of St John (1883) resulted from his public lectures.

His purpose was, as Otto Pfleiderer says, "to connect the metaphysical ideas, which had been arrived at by means of philosophical dialectic, directly with the persons and events of the Gospel narratives, thus raising these above the region of ordinary experience into that of the supernatural, and regarding the most absurd assertions as philosophically justified.

But the essential break in his life was in 1860, which marks the close of his main works on art and the opening of his attempt found a new social gospel.

The prayer in the burial service, as in the Communion service, contained distinct intercessions for the departed; and a form of Holy Communion was provided for use at funerals with proper introit, collect, epistle and gospel.

He was one of the founders of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

The word thus came to be applied to the whole body of doctrine taught by Christ and his disciples, and so to the Christian revelation generally (see Christianity); by analogy the term " gospel " is also used in other connexions as equivalent to " authoritative teaching."

In a narrower sense each of the records of the life and teaching of Christ preserved in the writings of the four " evangelists " is described as a Gospel.

The disciples of Jesus proclaimed the Gospel that He was the Christ.

But more and more as the work of preaching and teaching extended to such as had not this knowledge, it became necessary to include in the Gospel delivered some account of the ministry of Jesus.

This would be in accordance with the habits of mind of the early preachers of the Gospel.

In the first place, it would be natural that the habits of thought of the period when the Gospel was delivered orally should have continued to exert influence even after the tradition had been committed to writing.

It is fullest as to our first Gospel and, next to this one, as to our third.

After this time it becomes manifest that, as we should expect, documents were the recognized authorities for the Gospel history; but there is still some uncertainty as to the documents upon which reliance was placed, and the precise estimation in which l For the only two that can be held to be such in the first half of the 2nd century, and the doubts whether they refer to our present Gospels, see Mark, Gospel Of, and Matthew, Gospel Of.

In the case of the second and third there are indications, though slight ones, that he held the view of their composition and authorship which was common from the last quarter of the century onwards (see Mark, Gospel Of, and Luke, Gospel oF), but he has made the largest use of our first Gospel.

It is also generally allowed that he was acquainted with the fourth Gospel, though some think that he used it with a certain reserve.

Reference has already been made to the fact that during the greater part of the Apostolic age the Gospel history was taught orally.

It is now and has for many years been widely held that a document which is most nearly represented by the Gospel of Mark, or which (as some would say) was virtually identical with it, has been used in the composition of our first and third Gospels.

Questions connected with the history of this document are treated in the article On Mark, Gospel Of.

This name has been suggested by Schleiermacher's interpretation of Papias' fragment on Matthew (see Matthew, Gospel Of).

Nevertheless it will still appear that each Gospel has its distinct value, both historically and in regard to the moral and spiritual instruction afforded.

Luther distinguished between the Spiritual Church, which he identified with the Communion of Saints, and the Corporeal Church, the outward marks of which are Baptism, Sacrament and Gospel.

Still it remains true that the exclusive use of the argument from Mosaism, as itself implying the Gospel of Jesus the Christ as final cause (Taos), does favour the view that the readers were of Jewish origin.

Such was the general situation of the readers of this epistle, men who rested partly on the Gospel and partly on Judaism.

Among Benedict's works are commentaries on part of the Psalms and on the Gospel of.

Other places had been honoured by the presence and preaching of these great leaders of new-born Christianity; but it is at Rome that they had borne witness to the Gospel by the shedding of their blood; there they were buried, and their tombs were known and honoured.

The Gospel and unbroken tradition offered a better argument.

The story has been attacked more vigorously than any other portion of the Fourth Gospel, mainly on two grounds, (i.) the fact that, in spite of its striking character, it is omitted by the Synoptists, and (ii.) its unique significance.

Basing their theology upon the words of the Gospel of St John i.

The insignia (pontificalia or pontificals) of the Roman Catholic bishop are (I) a ring with a jewel, symbolizing fidelity to the church, (2) the pastoral staff, (3) the pectoral cross, (4) the vestments, consisting of the caligae, stockings and sandals, the tunicle, and purple gloves, (5) the mitre, symbol of the royal priesthood, (6) the throne (cathedra), surmounted by a baldachin or canopy, on the gospel side of the choir in the cathedral church.

Clement of Alexandria taught that justice is not merely retributive, that punishment is remedial, that probation continues after death till the final judgment, that Christ and the apostles preached the Gospel in Hades to those who lacked knowledge, but whose heart was right, that a spiritual body will be raised.

Dorner maintains that hopeless perdition can be the penalty only of the deliberate rejection of the Gospel, that those who have not had the opportunity of choice fairly and fully in this life will get it hereafter, but that the right choice will in all cases be made we cannot be confident.

The presence and power of His Spirit, the spread of His Gospel, the progress of His kingdom have been as much a fulfilment of the eschatological teaching of the New Testament as His life and work on earth were a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, for fulfilment always transcends prophecy.

The Fourth Gospel interprets both judgment and resurrection spiritually.

As contrasted with the colossal display of power on the part of the Church of Rome, it must be allowed that the churches which in the 16th century broke off from their allegiance to the Latin centre at first showed no great anxiety for the extension of the gospel and the salvation of the heathen.

During the Protectorate, in 1649, an ordinance was passed for " the promoting and propagating of the gospel of Jesus Christ in New England " by the erection of a corporation, to be called by the name of the President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, to receive and dispose of moneys for the purpose, and a general collection was ordered to be made in all the parishes of England and Wales; and Cromwell himself devised a scheme for setting up a council for the Protestant religion, which should rival the Roman Propaganda, and consist of seven councillors and four secretaries for different provinces.'

For now the corporation was styled " The Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the parts adjacent in America," and its object was defined to be " not only to seek the outward welfare and prosperity of those colonies, but more especially to endeavour the good and salvation of their immortal souls, and the publishing the most glorious gospel of Christ among them."

He contributed to the expense of printing and publishing at Oxford the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in the Malay language, and at his death left 5400 for the propagation of the gospel in heathen lands.

George Fox, the Quaker, wrote to " All Friends everywhere that have Indians or blacks, to preach the Gospel to them .and their servants."

Driven by persecution from Moravia, hunted into mountain-caves and forests, they had scarcely secured a place of refuge in Saxony before, " though a mere handful in numbers, yet with the spirit of men banded for daring and righteous deeds, they formed the heroic design, and vowed the execution of it before God, of bearing the gospel to the savage and perishing tribes of Greenland and the West Indies, of whose condition report had brought a mournful rumour to their ears.

Under its influence twelve ministers at Kettering in October 1792 organized the Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen, and subscribed L 13, 2s.

Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians at Boston.

Both the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society were at that time suffering from a general coldness which, in the case of the latter society, had led in that very year to the committee reporting " a failing treasury and a scanty supply of men."

The Central African Mission (1858), indeed, is not for the most part manned by graduates, though it is led by them; but the Cambridge Mission at Delhi (1878), the Oxford Mission at Calcutta (1880), and the Dublin Missions in Chota Nagpur (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1891) and the Fuh-Kien Province of China (Church Missionary Society, 1887) consist of university men.

Another influence upon university men and others who have taken holy orders is that of the Younger Clergy Union of the Church Missionary Society (1885) and the Junior Clergy Association of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1891).

The Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (now absorbed by others, chiefly by the Church Missionary Society) was founded in 1834; the Scottish Ladies' Association for the Advancement of Female Education in India (which subsequently became two associations, for more general work, in connexion with the Established and Free Churches of Scotland respectively) in 1837; the Indian Female Normal School Society (now the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission) in 1861 (taking over an association dating from 1852); the Wesleyan Ladies' Auxiliary in 1859; the Women's Association of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Baptist Zenana Mission, in 1867; The London Society's Female Branch, in 1875; the Church of England Zenana Society (an offshoot from the Indian Female Society) in 1880.

It soon appeared, however, that neither the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel nor the Church Missionary Society was willing to be absorbed; and it was urged by some that in a great comprehensive national Church, comprising persons of widely different views, more zeal was likely to be thrown into voluntary than into official enterprises.

The Baptist Society celebrated its centenary in 1892; the London Missionary Society (Congregational) did the same in 1895; the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge kept its bicentenary in 1898; the Church Missionary Society its centenary in 1899; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel its bicentenary in 1900-1901; and the British and Foreign Bible Society its centenary in 1904.

Professor Delitzsch estimated that i oo,000 Jews had embraced Christianity in the first three quarters of the i 9th century; and Dr Dalman of Leipzig says that " if all those who have entered the Church and their descendants had remained together, instead of losing themselves among the other peoples, there would now be a believing Israel to be counted by millions, and no one would have ventured to speak of the uselessness of preaching the Gospel to the Jews."

The rude and barbarous northern peoples seemed to fall like "full ripe fruit before the first breath of the gospel."

Foremost in this work were William Ellis and John Williams (q.v.), who formed a native agency to carry the gospel to their fellow islanders, and so inaugurated what has since been a characteristic feature of South Sea Missions.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel came in 1819, mainly for colonists, the Church Missionary Society in 1837.

West Africa was first visited by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1752.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1864), the Norwegian Missionary Society (1866), and the Friends' Foreign Missionary Association joined in the work, the prosperity of which received a severe check by the French annexation in 1896.

The lines of missionary work have been, generally speaking, simple gospel preaching followed by education and industrial work.

The Anglican Church is not so strong in China as in some other fields; the American Episcopalians were first in the field in 1835, followed by the Church Missionary Society (in 1844), which has had stirring success in Fu-Kien, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1874.

But we unite in holding that these exceptions do not invalidate the assertion of our real unity in our common witness to the Gospel of the Grace of God."

The conference reported, " We have quite as much reason to be encouraged by the net result of the progress of Christianity in China during the 19th century as the early Christians had with the progress of the Gospel in the Roman Empire during the first century."

Native workers have done something to carry the Gospel into the French colonies of Tongking and Annam.

In the Straits Settlement the foundations of modern missionary effort were laid by the London Missionary Society pioneers who were waiting to get into China; they were succeeded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1856), English Presbyterians (1875), Methodist Episcopalians (1884), who have a fine Anglo-Chinese College at Singapore, and the Church of England Zenana Society (1900).

In Dutch Borneo the Rhenish Society is slowly making headway among the Dyaks; in British Borneo the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1848) and the Methodist Episcopalians occupy the field.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has an important mission in British Guiana.

The identification of the author of the second Gospel with Mark, which we owe to tradition, enables us to fill in our picture of him a little further.

Swete, The Gospel acc. to St Mark (1898), Introduction, § I., where the authorities are fully cited; also the art.

There was another, though perhaps not incompatible, tradition that he preached the gospel and presided over the church at Aquileia in North Italy.

It may be added that the Venetians prided themselves on possessing, not only the body of St Mark, but also the autograph of his Gospel; this autograph, however, proved on examination to be only part of a 6th-century book of the Gospels, the remainder of which was published by Bianchini as the Evangeliarium forojuliense; the Venetian part of this MS. was found some years ago to have been wholly destroyed by damp.

It has been at various times supposed that Mark wrote other works besides the Gospel.

In the Roman Catholic Church the most characteristic ritual feature of the festival is now the solemn extinction of the paschal candle after the Gospel at high mass.

The gospel for the day consists of the history of the Passion as recorded by St John.

In the Church of England the history of the Passion from the gospel according to John is also read; the collects for the day are based upon the bidding prayers which are found in the Ordo Romanus.

The third council of Carthage in 397 forbade anything but Holy Scripture to be read in church; this rule has been adhered to so far as the liturgical epistle and gospel, and occasional additional lessons in the Roman missal are concerned, but in the divine office, on feasts when nine lessons are read at matins, only the first three lessons are taken from Holy Scripture, the next three being taken from the sermons of ecclesiastical writers, and the last three from expositions of the day's gospel; but sometimes the lives or Passions of the saints, or of some particular saints, were substituted for any or all of these breviary lessons.

It seems to be certain that St Francis at the beginning had no intention of forming his disciples into an Order, but only of making a great brotherhood of all those who were prepared to carry out in their lives certain of the greater and more arduous of the maxims of the Gospel.

Symeon was no doubt his original Aramaic name, and the earliest gospel, Mark, which has some claim specially to reproduce Petrine tradition, is careful to employ Simon until after the name Peter had been given, and not then to use it again.

The Gospel narratives are unanimous in describing Peter as one of the first disciples of Christ, and from the time of his call he seems to have been present at most of the chief incidents in the narrative.

He also published a small work, The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of History, in which the views of Renan on the gospel history were dealt with; a monograph on Pascal for Blackwood's Foreign Classics series; and a little work, Beginning Life, addressed to young men, written at an earlier period.

A husband at initiation left his wife, committing her "to God and the gospel"; a wife her husband.

He might not lie nor take an oath, for the precept "Swear not at all" was, like the rest of the gospel, taken seriously.